


The Thing You Shouldn't Do

by tackytiger



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Battle, Blood, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Non-Graphic Mention of Vomit, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, POV First Person, POV Harry Potter, Resistance, Spy Draco Malfoy, Trauma, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:28:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23840776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tackytiger/pseuds/tackytiger
Summary: The war drags on and on, and Harry is the one who has to end it. Why shouldn't he use Draco Malfoy to win it? It's okay to use him if they hate each other, surely.Vague AU in which Draco turns spy for the Order, and Harry falls in love.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 66
Kudos: 360





	The Thing You Shouldn't Do

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cibee (Cibeeeee)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cibeeeee/gifts).



> Ages ago Cibee sent me a Tumblr ask - a prompt (Before We Jump) for the characters saying "I love you". I hope you don't mind that the jump is metaphorical here, Cibee - but it feels like they're taking a leap together, anyway! Thank you for the prompt and for your wonderful presence in the fandom.
> 
> I originally came up with this for the Drarry Discord Drabble Challenge - Prompt: The Less I Know, the Better. It was 322 words, and I expanded it because I thought it would work nicely for a falling-in-love tale, even if it did come with a healthy side of angst.

So much of my time before had been taken up with hating Malfoy that it felt like too much when the Order asked me to let him join us.

We were still at war, and I had enough to do—enough to _think_ about. Malfoy was nothing but an inconvenience, then—just a bad memory. He had smashed my nose, I had sliced him up, and I didn’t even care that much. I thought that he had probably deserved it.

But Narcissa was dead at the end of a minor Death Eater’s wand, and that did what Dumbledore hadn’t managed back on the Astronomy Tower years before. Because Malfoy left the Manor, left his dad—just fucked off as soon as he realised his mum was really dead. 

He got Bellatrix with Sectumsempra before he Apparated out, and because she hadn’t been expecting it and Snape wasn’t around, she bled to death right there on the floor of the ballroom, which was a blow for them and a good thing for us, or so Malfoy thought. So he went to Remus, who went to Minerva, who brought him to me. And that’s how he ended up in Grimmauld, splitting the night air with his bad dreams, screaming for his mum until his voice gave out, keeping me awake and haunting my house with his sick grief. 

And I was supposed to just let him stay. _He can be useful to us_ , they told me. _It’s worth keeping him on our side_. I didn’t think he would ever be worth anything to anyone.

But if I was going to use him, I had to trust him. I spent months learning him—walking the corridors of the house with him in the stillest part of the night when neither of us could sleep, candlelit hours in the library as we searched for anything that might help us in the fight, meals eaten together and meals spilled when we fought over the dining table. By the time he decided what he was going to do, I knew him better than I knew anyone else. He was hungry, just like me—hungry for something bigger than us, hungry for something dangerous. By then, I didn’t want him to leave, but he peeled my fingers off his wrist when I clutched too hard, rubbed at the bracelet of bruises I left (I was always too much when it came to him), made me promise to let him go.

So he went back, and he’s still there now, though I think they probably hurt him badly to make sure they could trust him.

_Undercover_ , the Order calls it. I tell him he’s a double agent, like in James Bond. He likes that a lot, it helps him swallow down the sick terror of it all.

He comes back, sometimes, when he can, and when he’s there, Order meetings are always a bit more magical, like the spark of him is lighting something up inside me. 

It might be hope. 

He faces me across the room and tells me when I’m wrong. He calls me _Potter_ like it's a curse, and he leans over the table until he's within spitting distance, and he shouts at me like no one else will, and once he actually punches me, and I fucking love him for it. 

He thinks I'm dense and single-minded; I think he's too careless. He'll go along with any plan as long as it's dangerous for him, and most of the time I tell him how stupid he's being. I want to tell him that he doesn't need to punish himself anymore, but he'd hate me for it (and anyway, everyone else is always listening).

But he's brave as can be, and when he's not being reckless, he's brilliant. Sometimes I think that he's the only one who cares as much as I do.

He usually has to leave straight after the meetings—I'd never try to stop him—but sometimes he stays a while, before he goes back to that place. I take him up to my room and we run up the stairs hand-in-hand and I don't care who's watching or how much of my desperate need they can see. I deserve this small thing, just for me. 

He calls me Harry when we're safe in my room. He asks me if I think he'll be ok, if he'll get out alive. He pushes me onto the bed like he wants nothing more than this, kisses my mouth and the desperate arch of my throat and the thin skin over my heart. He fucks me until I'm sweating and gets up to leave when I try to hold onto him for a bit longer. 

I always bruise him up, spill the pattern of my desperate fingers across his body until his skin blooms with the story of how much I need him. He gets me to heal him before he goes back there, but I keep the marks of his mouth livid on all the secret parts of my skin. I’ll take what I can get, and keep it while I can. He doesn’t say anything about it, just bares his throat for the touch of my wand and trusts that I’ll do a good enough job to keep him safe.

Even when he’s with me, he keeps his secrets. He tells me that he hopes he'll be back soon, but the less I know, the better. He asks me again if I think he'll live through this one. I tell him I don't know. 

I kiss him goodbye. 

* * *

When we finally get Voldemort, it’s mostly because of Malfoy and his tricks and his dangerous plans, and by then I’m gone far beyond wondering what Malfoy is worth to me, because I _know_.

The last fight is vicious—nothing noble, no mercy; just my wand stuck to my palm with blood (mine, other people’s, who knows) and the sizzle of my spellwork and Voldemort so close that when I kill him, I feel the hot stink of his last breath on my cheek.

I don’t even wait to see who we’ve lost, I just go to find Malfoy, somewhere deep in the Manor. When I reach him, I can tell from the quivering pull of his shoulders that he’s hurt, maybe badly, but I wrap myself around him anyway and he smiles with blood on his teeth, before he bends over and is tidily sick in the corner of the room.

“You did it,” he tells me, and I can see in his eyes that he’s killed people today, just like I have.

“I’m in love with you,” I reply, and he laughs as he wraps an arm around my waist, leans a bit too heavily on me as he walks me out of the room.

“Do you love me back?” I ask, a bit helplessly. I'm not sure what I'll do if he says no.

“Why do you think I did all this?” he asks, and then we’re outside and the dawn light is gauzy through the haze of battle spells, and I know that this time I get to take him home with me for good.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and thanks for reading.
> 
> If you liked this, I'd love to hear what you thought of it. I welcome chats on Tumblr too - [I'm @tackytigerfic](https://tumblr.com/blog/tackytigerfic) on there!


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